


I Didn't Let It Slow Me Down

by th_esaurus



Category: Jonas Brothers
Genre: Incest, M/M, vampirism as diabetes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-24
Updated: 2013-02-24
Packaged: 2017-12-03 11:48:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/697936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/th_esaurus/pseuds/th_esaurus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"If I can't stop," Nick says, shaking all over, "You gotta make me stop, okay?"</p><p>"Okay. Cross my heart and hope to—you know how it goes."</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Didn't Let It Slow Me Down

Nick is thirteen, on tour, and just about to hit puberty when he gets infected. The specialists, once they enter the scene, tell his parents to avoid the term "bitten", as it spread panic about an already misunderstood disease, though Nick has two pinprick scars on the arch of his neck that protest otherwise. They tell him a good foundation will cover it up; they give him a pamphlet of Dos and Don'ts, common errors and mythology versus fact; they give him a dog tag engraved with his name, blood type and a number. It isn't a very high number.  
  
Nick listens miserably while a white-faced woman with vivid lipstick tells him cheerfully that this is manageable, if not curable – he'll have to avoid sunlight where possible, eat plenty of rare meat, raw as he can stomach it. She laughs like plastic as she tells him the no-reflection gig takes a little getting used to. Then she taps the thin veins of his left arm with two fingers, and gives him an injection that hurts only for a moment. "To make you benign," she explains. "So you can feed without passing on the infection." It seems so simple.  
  
He can hear Joe shouting in the corridor outside, yelling the word  _vampire_  at the top of his lungs because no one else will use it. Nick has to go calm him down, put Joe's hand over his heartbeat and prove he's still himself. "I know," Joe says, frustrated, pushing as hard as he can against Nick's chest. "You doof. I  _know_."  
  
Joe spends the entire drive home with his body pressed up against Nick's, his arm fierce and tight around Nick's shoulders, his palm covering up the bite marks on his neck. He holds Nick as though he can make him warm. Nick just shivers a little in his grip and rests his hand on Joe's kneecap. He can feel through the denim there, through Joe's skin and muscle, the endless network of veins and arteries pulsing life through Joe's body, right under his fingertips like Nick's hands are swimming in Joe's blood.  
  
He puts his clenched fist back in his own lap, and keeps it there for the rest of the journey.  
  


*

  
  
They fall into a pre-show routine. Nick has a little kit he uses to test his blood toxicity – if it's not quite low enough, he can top up the suppressant that's shipped to him monthly in little vials; antiseptic wipes and sterilised needles that seem like such overkill. He doesn't have an immune system anymore, he just doesn't get ill. It's a perk, he supposes, because he has to find perks somewhere. After that, he sits with Kevin to feed.   
  
Joe threw a hissy fit when Nick chose Kevin. He said it was because Kevin was older and knew how to actually sit still for two minutes; he didn't say it was because he loved Joe more. He didn't say it was because he thought, every single day, about putting his mouth to the pulse point in Joe's throat and biting down. Nick was young and terrified and ill, his body on the cusp of rebelling. He had to think in black and white terms now, and Kevin was a lesser temptation. Kevin was less of a risk.  
  
Nick drinks from the wrist, never the neck. They try and do it as casual as possibly, perfunctory, so it becomes less weird and more like a fact of life. Kevin has a timer on his watch and he counts aloud five seconds exactly from when Nick bites down to when he has to stop. The first time, Kevin flinched as Nick's sharp little teeth broke his skin and Nick had jerked back, apologetic, horrified at the twin threads of blood wending down his brother's palm. Joe was there, right beside them with a box of tissues and a first aid kit, jumping up, unsure who to comfort. "Just—" Kevin said, holding his wrist out gingerly, "Just go for it, don't even think about it."  
  
Nick sat shaking afterwards as his brothers made a circle around him, enveloping him in their warm arms, their soft skin, their pulses.  
  
But he got used to it quickly enough. Nick's a fast learner.   
  
So they clean up Kevin's wound, strap on their guitars, stretch, and hit the stage. They used to pray before every show, but have put that particular ritual aside while they wait on a few test studies to see how it might affect Nick. The skin beneath his ring has begun to itch a little in recent weeks, and Nick resorts to taking it off at night; he doesn't tell his parents but Joe notices, sits on his bed with him and massages the joints of his fingers sometimes.   
  
Nick tears up the stage. Maybe only a hundred, fifty, twenty people are there to see it, but with that lifeblood crashing around his body like a drug, Nick just tears up the stage. His voice is inhuman, his fingers playing his six-string like a legend instead of a kid. It makes Kevin rock out, it makes Joe lose all his inhibitions and sing with all his heart, jerking around the stage, rushing up to Nick and tearing down his walls. Nick doesn't know what he'd do if he couldn't sing, if he had no outlet for the craze of energy that surges through him after the feed.  
  
He pours it out of his soul and straight at Joe, and Joe takes it. Joe grins, yells into his microphone, and takes everything Nick can offer.   
  


*

  
  
Joe has mood swings about Nick's condition. There are times when he thinks it's hilarious that Nick can lift him off the floor with no effort, or lap him twice on a running track. There are times when all he wants to do is bug Nick with questions: what does it feel like? What does it taste like? Does Nick dream? Does he dream of vampire sheep? Can he touch Nick's fangs? He does, the last one, getting Nick to sit practically in his lap on their cramped hotel room floor and making him open his mouth.  
  
"Your fingers could've been anywhere," Nick says dubiously. Joe waggles his eyebrows and Nick hits him, making sure to keep his strength in check.   
  
"Say  _ahhh_ ," Joe says childishly. He tilts Nick's head back by his chin and peers into his mouth, inspecting his still-wonky teeth. The fangs aren't blatant and could pass for a normal boy's incisors, just a little more sheen, a little more sharp. Joe runs his blunt fingertip down one. His thumb rests on Nick's bottom lip. "Weird," Joe murmurs to himself. Nick can't blush anymore, but he feels sort of tingly in his hands and feet.  
  
There are times, too, when Joe's angry. It's stupid things that set him off: when he forgets and hands Nick a diet Coke he won't drink, offers him a chip that Nick shakes his head at; when Nick and Kevin shuffle off into the corner so Nick can feed. "It's not like a secret club," Nick says, boggling as Joe accuses him. "We're not talking smack about you behind your back, okay?"  
  
"Why can't we take turns?" Joe demands. "Why can't  _I_  help you sometimes? I feel so damn useless when you're going through this shit and all I can do is stand here and  _watch_."  
  
Nick can't give him a reply he wants to hear.  
  


*

  
  
The world turns. They get dropped by their record label – the music isn't selling, the image isn't working, too young, too early, too many excuses – and picked up by someone new for a second chance. Nick never does figure out what wasn't clicking before because it's working like a charm now, seducing the teen pop world out of its adoration, fervour and money. Cameras don't pose the same problem as mirrors, much to Nick's relief, and they travel mostly during the day, out of the high noon sun. Everything's less an issue, more a mild irritation.  
  
It's around this time that Nick realises he's in love with Joe. Maybe the discovery doesn't shock him as much as it should: it's just another one of those facts of life that Nick never thought could happen. Becoming a rock star. Turning into a vampire. Falling in love with his brother. It's not like he's going to do anything about it.  
  
Nick's voice drops, he revels in his growth spurt, and Kevin starts timing eight seconds a night on his stopwatch. He starts having to pull his arm away from Nick because Nick forgets to stop. They don't mention it the first few times; Kevin just looks at Nick like he's a stranger for a moment, then makes a crack about  _a little bit longer and you'll etcetera_ , nudging him on the shoulder. Nick gets into the habit of putting his mouth next to Joe's skin when they roughhouse, or sometimes when they sleep, too tired, in the same bed. He just puts his open lips to Joe's collarbone or his shoulder or, one time, when Joe was long asleep, to the corner of his hip, where his t-shirt had rucked up in bed. Nick always wipes his mouth afterwards, scrubbing clean the traces of Joe's sweat on the back of his hand.  
  
"You always do that thing," Joe murmurs one night, close to midnight, when the fat moon is shining pale between the slit in their hotel room curtains.   
  
"I like how specific you are."  
  
"That thing with your mouth," Joe says, low. Nick doesn't answer, so Joe turns over in bed, looks across the space to where Nick is prone, watching him. Joe grins, wolfish. "You wanna bite?"  
  
"Joe."  
  
"Come on. I'm bet I'm tasty like a hot tamale."  
  
"Don't joke." If he tries hard enough, Nick can smell the tang of blood in the air, even sealed tight under Joe's skin.   
  
"You always can, though," Joe says, quiet again. "I know you're like, weaned onto Kevin's life juice or whatever—" (a dubious fact Nick invented to stop him pushing, pushing more) "—but the offer's always there."   
  
He doesn't say anything more after that, so Nick scrunches his eyes shut and tries to sleep.  
  


*

  
  
Nick's unnatural high lasts long after the show tonight, long after the screams die down and the venue empties and he and his family are back at their hotel, settling in for the night. Nick's been asking for a room apart from Joe's lately, just as a precaution, but Joe barges into his anyway, making himself at home on Nick's bed, propping up the pillows just the way he likes. Nick's buzzing, the tang of copper still clinging to the corners of his mouth, and he knows he can't deal with Joe's body all loose and laid out for him.  
  
He goes into the bathroom and fills a little needle with his suppressant, pricking the crook of his elbow and letting it flood his system, cooling and calming. It feels like a stupid, weighty safeguard, like slipping a condom in his back pocket before a date. Nick brushes his teeth until he feels less shaky, runs his tongue unconsciously over his fangs. He ventures back into the bedroom, half hoping Joe's asleep. He's not. He's watching  _Maid in Manhattan_.   
  
Joe's arm fits easily around Nick's shoulders. "You fed tonight?" Joe asks lazily, by rote now. He rarely sits to watch Nick drink these days, presumably fending off his jealousy by ignoring it. Nick nods. Joe nods back, his fingertips making patterns on Nick's ivory skin.  
  
When they kiss, it's Joe that starts it. Technically, technically Joe starts leaning in first; Nick closes the gap. Joe says, "Oh," under his breath, but he doesn't sound surprised. Nick can feel Joe's pulse in his lips, in the place where their thighs are ghosting together, in the hand he has on Joe's jaw. Nick pulls back before he feels like he won't be able to pull back at all.   
  
"Oh," Joe says again. Then, "I guess that was a long time coming, huh?"  
  
Their lips come together more violently the second time, Joe's mouth falling open against Nick's chill breath, his hands tangling in Nick's hair. He licks a line across Nick's bottom lip, then runs his tongue tentatively over Nick's slick teeth. He puts the tip of it against Nick's fang, and Nick has to jerk back to keep himself from biting down. His hand is trembling with the effort of keeping his whole body in check. Nick wants to rip Joe open and drown inside him. "I can't do this," he says, pushing at Joe's chest, hard. "It's not even that you're my brother." He laughs harshly, bitter as lemons. "I don't even care that you're my brother."  
  
"So kiss me," Joe says simply, desperately. "Let me give you this."  
  
Nick looks at him for a very long time. "I can't," he says. "I want to take more than you have to give."   
  
Joe just shakes his head, shrugging.   
  
The TV, on mute, flickers placidly, unwatched. The sounds of the night outside fade, and Nick feels, like he always does under moonlight, somehow renewed, like he's woken up from a long sleep. Eternity passes.   
  
Nick breathes out and turns over, clambering over Joe's thighs to straddle him. He runs his palms for a moment over the hard edges of Joe's torso, the muscles he built over the years to try and rival Nick's effortless potency. He taps Joe's side and gets him to sit up, pulling his t-shirt up over his arms. Nick goes with him when Joe settles back down, laid out on top of him like a sheath. Joe shivers involuntarily at the cold of his skin but doesn't complain.   
  
Nick licks along the ridge of his chest. "Come here," Joe says, so quiet. He pulls Nick up so their foreheads are pressed together, his hands framing Nick's face. "Tell me what I taste like."  
  
"If I can't stop," Nick says, shaking all over, "You gotta make me stop, okay?"  
  
"Okay. Cross my heart and hope to—you know how it goes."  
  
"I'm serious, Joe."  
  
"Okay."  
  
Nick puts his lips against the fragile lines of Joe's throat, and inhales. He smells like the whole world.  
  
He doesn't drink immediately when he bites down. He listens to Joe's sharp intake of breath, feels the way his hands tighten on Nick's shoulders. A fat dribble of blood slips down his tanned skin, and Nick laps it up with his tongue. The shock of it floors him, the way it tastes so different to Kevin, sweet and thick as syrup. Nick clasps a hand against Joe's neck to brace him and kneels up for a better angle, biting down in earnest, drinking, just—drinking and revelling in it. It's obscene. Nick feels starved. He feels like he would give up everything, the money and the fame and the  _music_ , to make this moment last forever, this perfect, pure thing, Joe's everything trickling through his lips. He can't swallow fast enough. Maybe he's been drinking for seconds, maybe minutes. Nick knows, as surely as he knows that he loves Joe, that he won't be able to stop.   
  
Nick doesn't know how long Joe struggles to push him off for, but he only feels it when Joe puts grabs two full fistfuls of Nick's hair and wrenches him backwards so violently that his spine cracks in protest. The wound in Joe's shoulder is bleeding, not gushing, and his blood oozes out from Nick's open mouth, dripping like paint onto Joe's skin. Nick rubs his fingers in it, obsessed, and sucks them into his mouth, scared to waste even a single drop. Joe hits the side of his face feebly. Maybe he means to slap Nick. He doesn't have the energy to.  
  
Joe says his name three times before Nick hears it.  
  
"Nick," he says. "Nick. Can you get me a towel?"  
  
Nick licks at his lips. It tastes like sugar.   
  
He climbs off Joe uncomfortably and goes into the bathroom and fetches him a pile of cream towels. They'll stain badly, but there isn't an alternative. He crouches at Joe's side as Joe tries to steady his breathing, and presses the thick cotton to Joe's neck and shoulder. He can taste Joe in every crevice of his mouth. Nick makes Joe put his hands against the towel to hold it there, and goes back into the bathroom and retches over the sink. He washes his mouth out until it's numb.   
  
Nick helps Joe to the sofa, sits him down and changes his towel, then peels back the bed sheets and changes those too. They don't go back to bed. Instead, Nick curls up at Joe's side, under the sanctuary of his open arms, breathing through his mouth so he can't smell the inescapable reek of blood on everything.  
  
"Was it worth it?" Joe asks, after a time. He sounds exhausted.  
  
"No," Nick says.  
  
"Did I taste all nasty?"  
  
"No," Nick says, quieter.   
  
Joe falls silent. He pulls the towel off his neck gingerly, wincing, inspects it and then presses it back firmly. He strokes his thumb idly down Nick's too-smooth cheek. "If you turned me—" he starts to say.  
  
"You should go to sleep," Nick tells him, his voice choking. "You've lost a lot of—you need to rest up for tomorrow. For the show."  
  
"Yeah," Joe says, closing his eyes. "Yeah."


End file.
